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IN THIS ISSUE: FRONT ROW Youth- and School-Based Sports: Agents Infiltrating High Schools – What Did We Expect? SIDELINES Announcements
FRONT ROW YOUTH- AND SCHOOL-BASED SPORTS Are Women More Sportsmanlike Last month we (not to mention half the country) spotlighted the remarkable women’s college softball game during which two players carried an injured opponent around the bases so she could be credited with a home run. The incident raised an interesting question among several journalists: Would male athletes have done the same thing? Are men less likely than women to respond to sentiment or empathy during athletic competition? James Day of the Statesman Journal asked readers the following questions: • A softball player pops up for the second out, goes back to the dugout, and gets high fives. Would that happen in baseball? Still not convinced? Then meet women’s softball coach Bill Dumont of James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. Last month, with his team leading 3-1 in the eighth inning, Lincoln High loaded the bases against him with one out. The next batter stepped up to the plate but was called out because her helmet was missing the required chinstrap. Since Lincoln didn’t have any more in its dugout, that meant the next batter would be called out, too. Lincoln’s coach Carlos Gonzalez asked Dumont if he would lend a chinstrap from his dugout. “He said, ‘No, absolutely not,’ looking at me like I had three heads,” Gonzalez told the Daily News. “He wanted to take the outs. He jumped on it in a heartbeat. He smelled blood in the water.” Gonzalez’s father, an assistant coach, tried to appeal to Dumont’s sense of sportsmanship by referring to the women’s softball incident mentioned above in which an opposing team was lauded for showing compassion for its competitor. “Dumont was like, ‘No way. Be a man about it.’” Footnote: As to the three women whose teachable moment inspired the nation, they were guests on The Ellen DeGeneres Show where the host gave them a free trip to a resort spa in Florida. “This story is so inspirational,” DeGeneres told her audience. “This is just a testament to how everyone should act.” See a video of the incident here. [statesmanjournal.com, 5/4/08; yakima-herald.com, 5/8/08; dailynews.com, 5/13/08]
The recent headlines about basketball player O.J. Mayo allegedly receiving thousands of dollars in gifts in high school from a shady promoter on behalf of a sports agency, which later signed Mayo, sparked calls for reform. The problem is, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Most superstars want to jump to the NBA as soon as possible. If they come from a poor neighborhood, their family probably wants them to do so, too. So also do fans, advertisers, agents, teams, and of course the league. The only ones who don’t are colleges and universities, who want their piece of the pie for as long as they can hold onto it. Bobby Knight was an exception who thought athletes should stay in school – not to help his basketball program but to get a degree. He called the phenomenon “the worst thing that’s happened to college basketball since I’ve been coaching.” No laws or high school or college regulations ban agents from contacting high school or even middle school students. “They can make contact, come around, talk to these kids any time they want, meet their families,” Florida coach Billy Donovan told the News-Press. Exacerbating the problem is that agents are under the purview of the NBA, not the NCAA. Letting the NBA “protect” high school phenoms is like letting the fox watch over its most promising hens. Its solution has been to set a minimum age of 19 for players to join the league. All that did was to turn colleges into basically a NBA developmental league, transforming players into “one and done” marketing juggernauts and showcasing their talents for team owners. “There is no silver bullet to all this,” Jim Haney, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, told The New York Times. “It’s all about ethics and character. You can’t legislate that.” [nytimes.com, 5/13/08, 5/18/08; news-press.com, 5/20/08]
“I thought I had killed my coach,” pitcher Dan Pecora of State University of New York at Oswego feared as the ambulance approached the stunned-silent baseball field. Minutes before, in the top half of the ninth inning of the play-in game for the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament, Pecora’s line drive down the third-base line had struck his manager and third-base coach Frank Paino in the side of the head with an awful sound. Dan Pepicelli, manager of the opposing team from St. John Fisher, rushed to his side. Paino’s eyes were rolling around in his head. He couldn’t move his left hand. Hot and cold flashes seized him. His head was swelling badly. As Paino was rolled into the ambulance, he demanded to be put back in the game. When he realized they weren’t going to listen to him, he had one last message to his players: “Don’t forget to eat. The meal money is in my duffel bag.” Pepicelli gathered his players in the dugout and said he wanted to stop the game and allow Oswego to win. “I was just trying to do the right thing,” he told Wayne Drehs of ESPN.com. “Nobody wanted to play anymore. We all felt sick.” Doing so, however, would eliminate them from the tournament, end their NCAA dreams, and bring a premature end to the college career of eight seniors, including Justin Lutes, whose inside pitch to Pecora would be the last one he threw as a collegian. “It isn’t exactly the dream I had about how I wanted to go out,” Lutes told ESPN.com. “But there was a lesson we all learned. People may think sports is their life. But when you see somebody’s life flash before you, you realize there are bigger things in the world than a baseball game.” To a man, the players agreed. “Could we have come back and won?” Pepicelli told ESPN.com later. “Of course. But if you play that scenario out and we do win, then what? What do you get out of that?” While recuperating at home, Paino followed Oswego’s progress in the tournament by Internet updates. He was astonished as his team, the fifth and lowest seed in the tournament, advanced all the way to the championship. In the final game, he nervously pressed the refresh button on his computer again and again through the afternoon as his team slowly built 5-3, then 6-3, then 8-3 leads through seven innings. And then the bottom fell out. Their opponent, Brockport, scored six runs in the eighth and went ahead 9-8. That’s when Paino’s online connection went out. It was too much for his weakened condition. He fell asleep. A phone call jarred him awake an hour later. “Coach…” It was sophomore outfielder Brian Stark, whom he’d appointed to manage the team in his absence. “We got it done. We won it. And you were right there with us the whole time.” They had scored three runs in the top of the eighth to win only the third crown in school history. And pitcher Pecora, who had hit the ball that laid his coach out four days earlier, saved the win with two innings of relief. Paino, who suffered a concussion and small fracture, has now recovered and is back on the job.
NFL Commish’s Next Target: Fans Although the report card on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s zero-tolerance policy on off-field player misconduct is still incomplete as incidents persist, many have given him an “A” for effort so far. This season he’ll take on an even more challenging task: a fan conduct policy. No details have been released yet, but it’s likely clubs’ pocketbooks will be lightened significantly for unruly spectator behavior. With violent and abusive incidents occurring in nearly every NFL stadium each week, many TV watchers and ticket buyers will welcome the crackdown and a decrease in such incidents as these: • New York Giants fans pelted the field with ice balls in 1995, knocking the opposing equipment manager unconscious “Goodell’s fan conduct policy will be the first step to taking the violence out of the stands and parking lots,” wrote Kevin Hench on Foxsports.com, “and keeping it on the field where it belongs.” [msn.foxsports.com, 5/23/08]
Report Faults Tennis’s Integrity Following allegations of match fixing and betting irregularities in professional tennis, the governing bodies for seven professional tennis organizations (the International Tennis Federation, the ATP, the WTA Tour, and the four Grand Slam tournaments) commissioned an independent review of the sport. The report, Environmental Review of Integrity in Professional Tennis, proposed 15 recommendations, including the investigation of 45 particularly suspicious matches during the last five years in which betting patterns strongly indicated gamblers profited from inside information. The report gave no details of the matches or players involved, but it concluded: “We do not doubt that criminal elements may be involved in seeking to subvert or corrupt some players/officials.” Another recommendation called on the sport to create a global tennis integrity unit that would oversee and monitor the game, noting that its findings might be just the tip of the iceberg and that the scope of questionable activities left “no room” for complacency. The report found the five most serious threats to pro tennis to be: [nytimes.com, 5/20/08]
An Official Lesson in Sportsmanship It’s not often when officials air their viewpoints. But we thought this blog account from an unknown youth soccer referee was particularly insightful. After a shot on goal was mishandled by a keeper, an opposing player kicked in the rebound. A defending player argued that it wasn't a goal because nobody can kick the ball once the keeper gets it. The ref explained that the keeper must have control of the ball, which he did not. At the end of the game, the player who had argued ran past the ref and said something, but he couldn’t tell what it was. As the ref shook hands with the players and coaches afterward, the player in question refused to shake his. The ref walked over to the boy’s coach, who was standing next to the player, and stuck out his hand again. “Hey man, it’s sportsmanship. Let’s at least shake.” The boy looked at his coach and then back at him and said, “Nope, I can’t. You cost us first place.” “The kid is 14 years old, and I understand he was frustrated and not sure how to control his emotions at that moment,” the ref wrote in the blog. “But what I was surprised about was his coach not saying anything to him. That coach has a responsibility to teach this kid about sportsmanship and being an adult.” [http://blowyourwhistle.wordpress.com, 5/8/08]
Baseball may not allow crying, but wrestling encourages handshaking – unless you compete in South Dakota. Last month, the South Dakota High School Activities Association voted to ban post-match handshakes between wrestlers and opposing coaches after complaints that there was too much handshaking going on. Wrestlers shake hands during the face-off at the beginning of a dual meet, before a match, after a match, and after the meet. “It seems like all we do is shake hands,” Bob Lowery, SDHSAA assistant executive director told the Rapid City Journal. He said coaches are often busy after a match preparing their next wrestler and aren’t available to shake hands. The new rule, he said, isn’t to discourage sportsmanship but to show wrestlers or coaches who choose not to shake hands in a bad light. Others were confused by that logic. “It shows great character to walk across the mat and shake the other coach’s hand,” said Rapid City Stevens coach Brian Moser. “I’ve always thought wrestling was a sport that you not only wrestle your opponent, but you are wrestling the other coach as well.” [rapidcityjournal.com, 5/8/08]
“Good on Hickstead!” That was the sentiment of the editor of Horse and Hound after the All England Jumping Course in Hickstead, West Sussex – the leading outdoor showjumping venue in England – cancelled all children’s events for the first time in 50 years because of parents' tantrums. It all started last year when a summer downpour forced the junior event to be moved from the prestigious international arena, which seats 6,000, to a smaller ring without a grandstand. “Events all round the country were being cancelled, but we decided to go ahead. We worked tirelessly around the clock at some cost to ourselves,” said showground director Lizzie Bunns. The parents didn’t care. They were furious about the lesser venue. “It was nasty, threatening behavior. Sadly, it is a sign of the times.” In recent years, showjumping for junior classes has become increasingly expensive, which has led to more pressures on parents and children to succeed. Nevertheless, say those who know the sport, there were more manners, politeness, and sportsmanship in years past. Sports psychologist Dan Bishop told the Daily Mail that if he went to work in showjumping today, “I would prefer to work with the horses.” [dailymail.co.uk, 5/5/08]
Runner Gives It Up to Shortly after Nicole Cochran of Bellarmine Prep ran a personal best in defending her 3,200-meter crown last month at Washington’s state high school track and field championships, her coach ran up to her, but he wasn’t happy. Meet officials said she’d stepped on the inside line on one of the laps. Andrea Nelson, who finished second, would be awarded first place. Cochran had been disqualified. Watching the award ceremony was understandably bittersweet for Cochran. As the athletes stepped off the awards stand, Nelson walked over to her, took the medal from around her neck, and draped it over Cochran’s. “It’s your medal,” she told her. “You’re the state champion.” The other top eight finishers concurred. They held an impromptu ceremony of their own, exchanging their medals to reflect the new standings. “That’s not how you win state,” Nelson told the News Tribune afterward. “She totally deserved it. She crushed everybody.” [docvmp.blogspot.com, 5/25/08]
Sixteen-year-old sophomore Rui Li finished dead last in the girls’ Class 4A state golf championship in Washington last month, which is odd considering she led the tournament with just three holes to go. After leading by five shots on the first day of the 36-hole contest, Li kept her lead all the way into the final three holes. That’s when the wheels came off. In a blur of disasters by her and birdies by her nearest opponent, she lost the tournament to Sedena Parks. By rule, Li and Parks kept each other’s score during the match, as well as their own. On the 18th hole, both players inadvertently gave Li a birdie, forgetting she'd had to scramble from the trees to save her par. During the awards ceremony, Li received her medal for second place and also one for the best sportsmanship during the tournament. One of the adults who had helped find her ball on 18 came up to her and said, “Great par on the last hole.” A chill ran down Li's back. She realized both she and Parks had marked a birdie for her on their scorecards. She hurriedly called her coach, who had left for home, and told her to come back. “I’ve been taught that sometimes the integrity of the player is more important than the actual skill set,” Li told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “If you shoot 67 and don’t have honesty, it taints it. I’d rather be a player with great integrity than a great player with questionable honesty.” As for her sportsmanship medal, she got to keep that. “It proved the award went to the right person,” her coach Cheryl Havener said. [seattlepi.nwsource.com, 5/23/08]
In her first year as cheerleading coach at Evergreen High School in Colorado, Tammy Dufford has faced many challenges, but none more than when freshman Megan Bomgaars asked to try out for the squad. Megan has Down syndrome. “High school cheerleaders are known to be elitist and exclusive,” Dufford told 9news.com. But the “mean girl” stereotype didn’t fit her team members or her coaching philosophy. She had no doubt her girls would accept someone with different abilities. Bomgaars was not only accepted, she made the team. Now came Dufford’s second challenge: Would they be able to compete with other schools? Bomgaars’s mother empathized with the coach and offered to withhold Megan from tournament events so as not to affect the team’s chances of winning. Dufford and the other girls would have none of it. Megan was part of the team. That meant every game and every tournament. Evergreen won the small varsity division and advanced to the state championship, where they finished 12th. But both Dufford and Bomgaars took home something more valuable: the 2008 National High School Spirit of Sport Awards by the National Federation of State High School Associations. As they were presented with it, the team lifted Megan to the top of their formation before a standing ovation from 8,000 spectators at Denver Coliseum. “This is an exceptional story and one that embodies all that is good and right about high school sports,” said Robert Kanaby, NFHS executive director. “Placing the individual above the team’s pursuit of winning championships is a perfect example of the spirit of sport.” [nfhs.org, 4/29/08; 9news.com, 5/30/08]
Senior Taylor Johnson of San Lorenzo Valley High School got a surprise after winning her third straight 1,600-meter title at the California Interscholastic Federation’s Central Coast Section meet in Gilroy last month. As she received her medal, she was also presented with the Steve Stearns Sportsmanship Award for what she did after her semifinal race. Instead of darting off the track for water and cold towels in the scorching afternoon heat, Johnson remained at the finish line to encourage and congratulate every single runner from every school as she came in. Her decision to choose sportsmanship over self was an inspiration to many. [cif.ccs.org]
When long jumper Stacey Bergeron was told her leap of 17’ 7” had won the Genesee Area Conference Blue Division meet last month at Lake Fenton, Michigan, you’d think she would have been elated. Instead, she was skeptical. The distance was three feet farther than her best-ever jump. Had she just replicated Bob Beamon’s herculean feat in 1968 at the Mexico City Olympics when he soared two feet past the Olympic record? She didn’t think so. She went to the press box and told the officials there must have been a mistake: “I don’t feel comfortable taking first place from the person who actually should be there.” The officials rechecked the recorder’s sheet. Sure enough, he had scribbled 12’ 7” but his 2 looked like a 7, and that’s what was announced to the crowd. The corrected result dropped Stacey out of the top six. But she was number one in terms of integrity. [Thanks Mark for the tip!] [mlive.com/flintjournal, 5/21/08]
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